Robotics and Mechatronics NewsFeed with the the latest news from Robotics and Mechatronics2018-07-27T14:41:06ZRobotics and Mechatronics12f4127a5f6a98a35ff68b8724fd9a9e21abf6b4@ram.ewi.utwente.nlSunRaM5 robot team highly commended as a competition finalist during the surgical robot challenge in London43b4d1d4656278e0d1055d505443f404f81ab422@ram.ewi.utwente.nl2018-07-27T14:30:00ZDuring the international Hamlyn surgical robot challenge, at the Imperial College in London, Marcel and Françoise presented the latest version of the MR safe robot, which was designed to perform a biopsy with high precision within an MRI scanner. The robot team consist of Vincent Groenhuis, Françoise J. Siepel, Marcel K. Welleweerd,, and Stefano Stramigioli of RaM in collaboration with Dr. Jeroen Veltman, radiologist at the Ziekenhuisgroep Twente (ZGT) and Abe van der Werf of Machnet B.V. See the following linkfor detailed information.

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Interview with Beril Sirmaçek in the TechMed Magazine6e9aaa5a8a5e8ead9c7e1409fe10d31d41288a5a@ram.ewi.utwente.nl2018-06-25T10:18:00Z
In the first magazine of Techmed is an interview with Beril Sirmaçek.

Coming Saturday, the campus will be filled with activities in which you are able to experience the possibilities and importance of science and technology in a fun way. We offer workshops and demos in an international atmosphere. Between 11.00 hrs and 16.00 hrs. we stand ready to welcome the guests. The EEMCS faculty also contributes to the Open House with activities:

The first robotic birds, like the Robird® that was developed at the University of Twente, are flying and operational right now. Still, taking off and landing like a bird or asymmetric wing flapping are not possible yet. Sharing Leonardo da Vinci’s dream, Professor Stefano Stramigioli wants to develop a new theory on flapping flight, leading to the next generation of robotic birds. For this, he received an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council, worth 2.8 million euros.

The ease with which birds are flying, made Leonardo da Vinci dream of machines that could do the same, already in the 15th century. Airplanes, with their fixed wings, work well but this is a watered-down version of the real thing: flapping flight. Mimicking the movements of bird’s wings, taking the complex air flow into account, is a different story. The Robird®, developed in Stramigioli’s group, is a major step forward. This is a robotic falcon that is commercially available through the spin-off company Clear Flight Solutions. It already won the European Technology Transfer Award.

In his new research project, Stramigioli wants to go much further: “We still don’t understand the 3D flow dynamics well enough. How to control this dynamics and design robots that can deal with it, is the next step. What we can’t do yet, is taking off and landing like a bird does, flying with asymmetrically flapping wings or automatically adapt to flow.”

Theory and wind tunnel tests

The development of the next generation of robotic birds starts with new theoretical insights. Stramigioli wants to use the so-called port-Hamiltonian system theory for this: it offers a powerful way of combining several physics domains and control theory, needed for describing what happens at the wing surface, for example. Based on the new insights, Stramigioli wants to test wing parts in the wind tunnel. The ultimate goal of his five year project is a new robotic bird.

For his project ‘PORTWINGS – Decoding the Nature of Flapping Flight by port-Hamiltonian System Theory’, Stefano Stramigioli now receives an ERC Advanced Grant. In this round, 269 senior researchers across Europe receive a total sum of 653 million euros.

The University of Twente is currently developing a smartphone technology based on the usage of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) and Augmented Reality (AR). This technology enables medical personnel to reconstruct 3D body sections quickly, only by holding the smartphone around the area of interest. This smartphone will display the augmented layers of the 3D skin surface in order to visualize invisible information for medical personnel.

“We would like to layer the information from the MRI and other vein scans (from sensor devices using laser speckle) and make them visible with augmented reality”, says Dr. Eng. Beril Sirmacek (Computer Science). This allows doctors to see the inner body segments, tumors, veins and the status of diabetic ulcers with the use of augmented reality. This visual support enables doctors to oversee the situation better and make better decisions. In a biopsy situation, this visual support can help with guiding the robot arms to reach the tumor for biopsy at the first attempt, instead of taking the off-chance and reach for the correct location by working with a patient for a whole day and making unsuccessful biopsy holes on the patient's body.

The augmented visualization of big data and the guidance with the smartphone application highly relies on the technology of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). “Even though I didn't have a medical background, our common focus on SLAM and AR provides a great platform.”

SLAM box

“When we started this project, our goal was to develop a SLAM box at the UT research group RAM (Robotics and Mechatronics). We can use our localization and 3D reconstruction software on different sensors and not only with the use of smartphones. Our vision will lead to many health applications, and other robotics applications will become more intelligent. With this technology, the algorithms quickly understand the 3D models of the surrounding objects regardless of the imaging sensors which are used.”

Prof. Dr. Ir. Stefano Stramigioli (Chairman of the Group, Robotics and Mechatronics): “SLAM is a core technology in robotics, but its universal usage will only be possible if we have methods to easily interface many sensors in a robotic system. At RAM, we intend to create a modular SLAM box which will automatically reconfigure itself if extra sensors are attached in a Plug&Play fashion. Then it would be possible to connect this “SLAM Box” to a complete robotic system, giving it powerful perception capabilities.”

We would be happy to know other researchers and interested students who would like to collaborate or take on a study and research in this field

Beril Sirmacek

Beril joined the University of Twente in October 2017. “Before starting to work with the Robotics and Mechatronics (RAM) group, she was working on remote sensing big data processing. She has developed a novel framework (known as farmAR) which provides augmented reality (AR) guidance in the field based on automatically processed remote sensing big data results. The implementation helped especially to people in the agricultural field for finding plant diseases and nutrition deficiencies easily with augmented reality. A simple smartphone application made the invisible data visible to users with a non-technical background. The framework received two awards. In 2016, farmAR was the finalist for the Environment, Health and Energy application of the year. And in 2017, it was awarded the winning B2B application of the year by the European Commision for serving to the satellite mission of Europe called Copernicus Masters. http://www.berilsirmacek.com/